Parental Involvement in Education

[Pages:79]RESEARCH

Parental Involvement in Education

Bridget Williams, Joel Williams & Anna Ullman BMRB Social Research

Research Report RR332

Research Report No 332

Parental Involvement in Education

Bridget Williams, Joel Williams & Anna Ullman BMRB Social Research

The views expressed in this report are the authors' and do not necessarily reflect those of the Department for Education and Skills. ? Queen's Printer 2002. Published with the permission of DfES on behalf of the Controller of Her Majesty's Stationery Office. Applications for reproduction should be made in writing to The Crown Copyright Unit, Her Majesty's Stationery Office, St Clements House, 2-16 Colegate, Norwich NR3 1BQ. ISBN 1 84185 715 7 April 2002

Table of Contents

Executive summary ...................................................................................................... 1

1 Introduction ......................................................................................................... 7

1.1 Study aims......................................................................................................... 8

1.2 Research Method .............................................................................................. 8

1.3 Arrangement of this report .............................................................................. 9

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Sample demographics.................................................................................... 10

2.1 Respondent selection and the weighted sample ......................................... 10

2.2 The weighted sample profile.......................................................................... 10

2.2.1 Marital status................................................................................................... 10

2.2.2 Respondent age.............................................................................................. 10

2.2.3 Ethnicity........................................................................................................... 11

2.2.4 Respondent working status........................................................................... 11

2.2.5 Parents' education.......................................................................................... 11

2.3 Children in the household.............................................................................. 12

2.4 Special educational needs ............................................................................. 12

2.5 Summary.......................................................................................................... 13

3 General involvement........................................................................................ 14

3.1 The subjective measure: how involved do parents feel? ........................... 14

3.2 Whether parents would like more involvement ........................................... 16

3.3 Responsibility for education.......................................................................... 17

3.4 Practical involvement in child's school........................................................ 18

3.5 Barriers to involvement.................................................................................. 21

3.6 Homework........................................................................................................ 22

3.7 How often the parent helps with homework................................................. 24

3.8 Confidence when helping with homework ................................................... 25

3.9 Relationships with teachers .......................................................................... 26

3.9.1 What parents talk about with teachers ......................................................... 27

3.9.2 Parents' confidence when talking to teachers............................................. 28

3.10 Attendance ....................................................................................................... 30

3.11 School's attitude to parents ........................................................................... 31

3.12 Summary .......................................................................................................... 33

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Awareness and understanding of education initiatives.............................. 34

4.1 Home School Agreement ............................................................................... 34

4.2 Awareness of other terms.............................................................................. 35

4.3 Knowledge of school life................................................................................ 39

4.4 Summary.......................................................................................................... 40

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Communication............................................................................................... 42

5.1 How parents find out how child is getting on at school.............................. 42

5.2 Quality of school's information ..................................................................... 43

5.3 How often receive written communication from school ............................. 44

5.4 Quality of written information........................................................................ 45

5.5 Ways in which written communication could be improved ........................ 45

5.6 External information sources ........................................................................ 46

5.7 Whether found DfES sources useful............................................................. 47

5.8 Whether done anything different as a result of advice in DfES source..... 47

5.9 How to get parents more involved ................................................................ 48

5.10 Summary ......................................................................................................... 50

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Literature review ............................................................................................. 51

6.1 Method ............................................................................................................. 51

6.2 General studies on parental involvement in education .............................. 51

6.3 Summary.......................................................................................................... 54

6.4 References....................................................................................................... 54

APPENDICES

Technical appendix ....................................................................................................A1

Questionnaire: final version ......................................................................................A5

Executive summary

Introduction

The Department for Education and Skills (DfES) commissioned BMRB Social Research to conduct a telephone survey of households containing children of primary or secondary school age (5-16) attending maintained schools. The survey was designed to investigate the level of involvement parents have in their children's education and general school life.

Key findings

? Around one in three (29%) parents felt "very involved" in their child's school life. Primary school parents were more likely to feel this way than secondary school parents. Mums were also more likely to say that they are `very involved' than dads.

? Around three quarters (72%) of all parents agreed that they wanted more involvement, and a third (35%) definitely agreed. When asked about the barriers to becoming more involved parents cited the competing demands in their lives such as work commitments, demands of other children, childcare difficulties and lack of time generally.

? Almost all parents were happy with the school's attitude towards them, with a large majority finding the school welcoming (94%) and willing to involve them (84%). Parents particularly value face-to-face contact with teachers. However, a significant minority (16%) felt that they would be labelled as `trouble makers' if they talked too much.

? Parents seem largely happy with the quality of written communication coming from schools, although a significant minority (27%) felt the general information ? as opposed to child-specific ?was spoilt by jargon. Parents who had left school at 16 were most likely to feel this way. However, most parents (85%) were happy with the quality of information provided, saying that the school gives clear information about how their child is getting on.

? Many parents were unaware of the various labels given to recent education initiatives. More than one in three (35%) did not recognise the term `Home School Agreement', despite the fact that all of them should have been invited to sign one.

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Aims

The aims of the research were to establish:

? the level of involvement parents have in their children's education, focusing on:

? practical help in schools ? relationship with teachers ? involvement with homework

? what parents perceive as barriers to further involvement

? the awareness of Government initiatives and information sources

? how parents find out about their child's progress at school and what improvements they think could be made to communication with schools

Background

The Government's strategy for involving parents in their children's education was first described in the 1997 White Paper `Excellence in Schools', which recognised that pupils need support from parents to ensure they reach their full potential. This strategy had three strands, around which the majority of the Department's work on parental involvement is based:

? Providing information to parents. ? Giving parents a more effective voice. ? Encouraging families to learn together.

The Department has introduced a number of initiatives to encourage parents to become more closely involved in schools, including the following:

? Schools are required to produce Home-School Agreements, which are developed in consultation with parents. These Agreements set out the roles and responsibilities of both parents and schools in building up a partnership to raise standards in education.

? Schools are required to publish annual reports and prospectuses to allow parents to make informed decisions about their child's education.

? Schools are also required to make at least one report per year to parents on their child's performance.

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? Parents are encouraged to have more of a voice in the way schools are run, for instance by taking part in home-school associations, or becoming parent governors. Parent Governor Representatives have also been elected to LEA Education Committees.

? The Department has also increased the amount of information available to parents, and has made this information more easily accessible. Information is available through a special Parents' Centre Website, as well as through a series of publications.

? There have also been a number of publicity campaigns which aim to involve parents more in their children's education. These include campaigns encouraging involvement in reading and maths and others supporting the distribution of Parents + Schools magazine and The Learning Journey (a guide to the curriculum designed for parents).

Given that all these initiatives are designed to increase parental involvement, there is a need to measure their involvement over time. To this end, the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) commissioned BMRB to conduct a survey of parents.

Method and sample description

In order to carry out the aims and objectives outlined above, BMRB conducted a telephone survey of parents of children aged 5-16 attending state schools (England only). This survey achieved a representative sample of 2019 households containing children of primary and secondary school age (5-16). The fieldwork was carried out from 21st of November to 19th of December 2001. The survey was carried out using a probability sampling technique devised by SSI, a commercial specialist.

A screening question was used to establish household eligibility and the computer programme made a random selection among those parents (or guardians) eligible for interview. Interviewers called back a minimum of ten times in order to complete an interview once a respondent had been selected. A `refusals' survey was also conducted, in which senior interviewers followed up `soft' refusals and tried to convert these into interviews. In total, interviews were achieved in 56% of all identified eligible households.

Where more than one child was aged between 5 and 16 in the household, the interviewer randomly selected one as the subject of the survey where an aggregation of parental behaviour across children of different ages would have been meaningless.

One quarter (24%) of households surveyed contained only one eligible parent, and most of these were headed by women. Because of this natural bias, 60% of the weighted sample of parents was female. The respondents' age profile was fairly homogeneous with more than half aged between 35 and 44.

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Dads were much more likely than Mums to be working full time, regardless of their marital status, but seven in ten mums had paid work of some description. Just over half (54%) of parents surveyed left full time education aged 16 or younger and these parents were less likely to work full time than those who left education at a later date. A significant minority (12%) reported that their child had special educational needs, but only 1% overall said he/she attended a special school.

Other findings

Parents describing themselves as `very involved' tended to provide more practical help to schools than other parents, and to be keenest on increasing their involvement. This suggests that those with the most experience of such involvement are enjoying it.

The majority (58%) of parents believed they had at least equal responsibility with the school for their child's education. Only one in fifty (2%) felt that the responsibility belonged wholly to the school.

One in five (21%) parents claimed to have helped out in class at some point, including one in ten (9%) who claimed to do so whenever there was an opportunity. This was more common among primary school parents than among secondary school parents (28% have helped at least once, compared to 12%). Other practical involvement included helping out elsewhere in school, with fund raising, with the PTA, or with special interest groups such as sports and drama clubs. Only a tiny minority (3%) said they had never been to a parents' evening.

Parents were much more likely to help with homework in the early years, especially as such homework may have explicitly involved them. Seven in ten (71%) parents of children in Year 1 claimed to help with every bit of homework. Understandably this decreases over time (to 5% in Year 11) but so does confidence that the parent can help. A typical reason associated with not helping with homework was that `teaching methods are different today', and some parents fear they would help in the `wrong way'.

Six in ten (58%) parents claimed to speak `regularly' to their child's teacher(s) about at least one issue, usually the child's progress, but a significant proportion (27%) also regularly discussed behaviour. Parents who left school at the end of compulsory education were less confident than other parents when talking to teachers, although only one in ten (9%) said they were not very / not at all confident.

Terms related to the National Curriculum (SATs, performance tables, Key Stages) were better known than the Home School Agreement but some primary school terms were not. One in five (20%) had never heard of the Literacy Hour, and two in five were unaware of the `daily maths lesson'. In this last case, awareness has actually decreased since 1999.

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